People who know me know that I’m not a huge fan of lager and also I’m not all that mad on football. So when we decided to go to see England play San Marino it was obvious that I was going to drink anything but lager wasn’t it?

To make a day of it we decided to go into London for the day before heading for Wembley that evening. We each had places we wanted to go to, pubs we wanted to visit, things we wanted to do while we were in the capital. This is how things went.

We started off with a quick visit to the Science museum. Having all been there before, we didn’t stay for long. We then made for our first pub of the day. The Zetland Arms, South Kensington. A nice traditional pub, kept fresh and clean, but in essence still how to my mind a pub should look. I had a pint of London Pride. While we were in here we got our only cask marque scan of the day for the worlds biggest ale trail app.

I wanted to go for a ride on the new cable car that goes over the Thames near Greenwich. We therefore left Kensington and made our way to the O₂. We had our second drink in the O₂ before we got onto the cable car. We stopped in the Slug and Lettuce which is inside. I had a Samuel Adams Lager. I had heard about this beer before and the read the fuss which is made about it on beer blogs. I thought I’d better try it. I must say that I did quite enjoy it. I’m glad it was only in a small bottle because I couldn’t drink much of it though. Also, being in the O₂, the price tag was enough to make a man weep, god only knows what a big bottle would cost.

After a fantastic view over London, on the other side of the river, Jonny took us to one of his London hangouts which he goes to after work, The Fox at ExCeL. They did have Deuchars on the bar but it was off, so instead I had an Amstel, a beer I hadn’t had for a long time, infact it was more than two years ago I had it last, back when I was last in Amsterdam.

After this pint we realised we were behind and if we wanted to get to the game on time we were going to have to hurry up, especially as we wanted to go into Brewdog Camden first. In Camden I had a Brewdog Zeitgeist and Punk IPA before we headed off to the football.

When we arrived and got ourselves into the stadium, we made our way directly to the bar, I couldn’t see anything which I would want to drink, especially as the only beer was Carlsberg. It wasn’t until later that we got talking to a guy who pointed out that selected bars around the stadium did have Tetley’s Smoothflow on offer. My question is why? Why can’t they have both beers on all bars? is it really that much of a logistical challenge?

Several Tetley’s and 5-0 win later and the game is over. Jay and Jonny decide to head for home while myself and Darren head back into Camden. We meet up with Joe, an old school friend, back in the Brewdog bar (he works there). I have a dead pony club. Joe nearly kills us all with some beef jerky which is hotter than the sun. Brewdog closes and we head into The black heart, just around the corner, in there I have a Camden Ink followed by a Camden Hells Lager, which was also really nice.

Following this the Black heart closes. We part company with Joe and Darren and I descend into the Camden night life until even that closes. finishing off the night talking to a French girl, who clearly just wanted to go home, about the problems of getting out of London when there are no trains late at night.

So that was our day out in the big smoke. Many, many beers. Two of them lagers, which I liked. I wasn’t expecting that.